There are tricks of the trade in the fire service that are lost through retirements or shared by a few that have been fortunate enough to have been mentored by a firefighter that's seen a few things. The Fire Minute is an attempt to share some of those tricks of the trade to extend every firefighters' proverbial "Tools in the Toolbox". The items presented are simply methods that someone has passed on and we are passing them on to you, the viewer, in hopes that you get something out of it: discussion, a reason to get out and train, etc.
Disclaimer: Training/Fireground Operations are inherently dangerous and can result in serious injury or death. We do not claim creation of the depicted techniques. This does not constitute professional advice, nor does it supersede department policies or procedures, especially regarding safety. The creator, contributors and parties shown are not liable for losses, injuries or damages caused by attempting the depicted firefighting techniques or methods.
Hi Chad, Great video!! If the two chainsaws had gone out, yes we have the axes on our hips but what about the rescue saw. In the spiel, it says that the rescue saw can be used for ventilation. Is there a reason that the axe is preferred over the rescue saw? Thank you
Great job with the video and sharing info to help! Line up your hole with the window blowing fire. Residentials: they typically have ceilings so...if they are intact, they should give you time to make your hole, pull the material, and punch the ceiling. Keep up the great work. lmk if you want to connect david@dashqrcodes.com
When estimating the stretch take a look at; 1. how far from rig to stairs? 2. what floor is the fire on? 3. is it a stairwell stretch or a stairway stretch- if using the well (or drop bag) a 50' stick will get you 3-4 floors. If no well option, a 50' stick will get you about 1 floor- If you can fit a gloved hand between the railings, you can use the well, otherwise the couplings get stuck. 50' of working line is usually plenty for an apartment. Consider breaking your Mattydale -or use the hose pack -and dropping the coupling down ("1 3/4 down") instead of the using the drop bag...it's faster. Great video!!!
Hello, awesome video I know this room was pretty obvious as far as locating the fire, can you give us your tips you use on locating the main body of fire when it's only smoke showing?
I have a couple other videos that give examples of how to read a roof to understand what’s going on below. There’s a lot of resources out there that dive into that subject more thoroughly. Sagging, a spongy feel, smoke seeping through the roofing material…I would also say communication with interior crews and inspection holes are excellent tools in the toolbox.
It gives the option of placing the gated wye in an easier spot to use. For example, on an old low or mid-rise with an exterior dry standpipe on the rickety fire escape, you can attach the 6’ whip and have the gated wye in a more accessible space, like the window to the center hallway. I’m sure there are others uses but that’s what I’ve used it on. A sketchy escape.
Great stuff. Just don’t be lax with trying to look cool by side sliding down the rail of the ladder. It looks cool until the ladder takes a bounce from someone else mounting the ladder or the wind and it boots you off the rail.
Clarify if you could please. Once you go to the 13/4 on the gatedY why do you tie it off? Does it act as a lock out on a machine or electrical panel that lets others know someone is working wth the line? Or it is to prevent accident shut off?
Everybody’s a little different, I suppose. But I try to encourage excitement about the job and an environment where one feels comfortable to ask questions. I subscribe to a positive environment.
Nice video, I’m impressed by the before and after of the helmet, pretty intense heat. You guys are more towards aggressive interior I guess, cool. How often it happens that the saw dies due to smoke and what should be done, just try and restart it or move somewhere with less smoke? I’m not familiar with vertical ventilation 😥.
It doesn’t happen that often, it was already having issues, but a lot of smoke can contribute to it stalling. That’s why we bring two saws and wear axes on our belts.
Hi, I really like your videos, good work. I’m a volunteer down in Ensenada, Mexico and I like to watch them with my crew and start discussions on how we can improve, sometimes it’s difficult being the translator, but it’s worth it. Pd. At first the area seemed familiar and thought, that must be the 805, then I saw city of San Diego on the engine and it made more sense.
Thank you for what you do! Glad you find it useful. Mi esposa es Mexicana y mis suegros no hablan inglés. And, good eye, that’s right around imperial avenue and the 805.
@@thefireminute625 Thank you for sharing your knowledge, it's really appreciated and helpful. I knew it, been driving there many times lately, I usually take the 805 over the 5. Vaya, que bien que hable español, útil cuando la familia no habla inglés. Are you a captain? I saw your red helmet in the video, here red is for captains.
Great Video, lots of good talking points. With the vertical vent assignment, it's hard to go against that on your gut feeling to search the rear of the structure.
See you haven't posted anything new for while. Really enjoyed your video's, and used many of your teaching points in my crews shift trainings. Thank you for your efforts. I hope my crew members pass the info on as I have from you. Much appreciated.
After all the science learned from NIST UL, the fact we still see people ventilating residential roofs and calling it bread and butter raises serious concerns. I’ve worked inner city east coast for 32 years and have subscribed to these tactics until learning better. They said the heat and visibility improved? Was this because water application occurring cooled the environment? Saying you cut the hottest spongiest spot, yet having someone sounding the roof, isn’t the point of sounding to avoid the spongy spots? What would the survival profile look like for the guy who fell through the roof with the flow path being demonstrated through the vent hole? Look at the amount of smoke coming from the ground level of the structure behind them as they ventilate, the volume of smoke from there doesn’t diminish after the first hole is cut. If verticals ventilation was removing enough smoke to be of benefit would you expect to see that go away or diminish ? We see improvements when water is on fire, we see conditions spread as flow path moves through the roof. In one hole we don’t see removal of smoke, rather we see spread of fire. In second hole we see little ventilation as water was on fire rapidly at the point of completing ventilation. Think about what we actually see instead of seeing what we want to see. Stay safe and keep learning.
Generally speaking, I refrain from judging other ways of “putting the wet stuff on the red stuff”, because I don’t presume to know more than them or be able to do it better than them. It’s RU-vid, after all. But, you always have a person behind a keyboard with an opinion. I would also consider a fellow firefighter stating a fire being “bread and butter” as one they regularly go on and not call into question that it’s a fire, and as it being a fire, is inherently dangerous. Fatalities occur on such a fire, we know this. But, still, the commonality of said fire can be inferred as “bread and butter”. The frequency of said fire versus fatality is, well, more something people use in the comments section as complacency? I’m not sure the inference. Look up the amount of firefighter fatalities during vertical ventilation as a trend the last twenty years. I’d say, we, as a whole, are doing a good job, despite firefighting as a whole being inherently dangerous. Regardless, since 2000, I have seen a lot of progress in the fire service. We put science into our approach now. Transitional attack is a thing. Understanding flow path and not just blowing out all the windows is a thing. We recognize PTSD and the need for behavioral wellness. We recognize all our people and appreciate their contributions. So, I’d put our training staff, or any professional fire dept, up against anyone who would call into question tactics such as vertical ventilation. Especially, saying they are blind to the science and simply see what they want to see. I work with ranking Firefighters far more educated than I, who would put me up on that roof. And I Trust them. Because You should be able to do that. But, also, because I’ve been in fires without water on fire where vertical ventilation made a significant difference, in heat and, especially, in visibility. One of the many things I’m proud of about my profession and where I work, is that our training staff never presume to know all, despite traveling the country for educational enrichment, are fully aware of a NIST UL studies, along with others. To presume a professional fire department of the top ten most populated cities would have no clue as to the research your citing demonstrates, if not anything, an ignorant, or egocentric way of stating our way is somehow wrong and you are inherently right because you mention a NIST UL study. As a member of a major metropolitan department, I wouldn’t presume to know as much as my counterparts in our training and education who specialize in being progressive, but I will say that they still encourage us to get on that roof and cut a hole. The message with the fire minute, generally, is one of humility and expressing a lesson learned where we don’t look great because things didn’t go all that well. What’s to learn from everything going right? We check the ego and try to share a lesson learned, rather than how good we look ( which can be many fires or edited to look that way). All this being said, 32 years in the fire service, regardless of where, is to be respected. Thank you for what you do and, by all means, reach out to said metropolitan departments with this data you have and change how we do things. I, personally, would be more than happy to oblige.
@@thefireminute625 thank you for your reply. I will agree that it is easy to sit back and look from the cheap seats and look at an operation and second guess. I believe this forum however does lend to the discussion. We should never shy away from questioning what we do and why we do it. The things that bother me are when we make statements that firefighting is inherently dangerous. Our goal should be zero injuries and deaths. We should strive for that in all we do and evaluate the risk benefit of all operations. Calling a methodology that has been done for decades yet new science demonstrates as having negligible success, rather adds to the overall risk of operations, calling this “bread and butter”. The other term for this is normalization of deviance. We can do it over and over but will it eventually lead to major injury or death? We must take that into consideration. In this case, single family vertical vent is something I’ve performed for decades. Many times a week. It wasn’t until observing the fire ground realities through the lens of new studies and science that my views of what was actually occurring changed. We must always strive to grow and learn. We must decide if putting a brother in the ground is a part of the inherent danger of the job on a 1200 square foot house that was probably torn down anyway. Use of videos with an open forum to debate or ask why something was done is one of the greatest tools we have to discuss together what we see. Otherwise the videos are for entertainment purposes only and their value diminishes as such. Thank you for your opinion, and taking the time to reply. Stay safe and keep moving forward.
Nice training and learning points. The best lessons from this might be to review the lessons learned by project mayday that identifies falls through the roof being the 4th biggest cause of maydays. With that in mind, review the lessons learned through many NIST/UL studies ( all are available on their web sight, including video lessons.). Those lessons would lead you to question why we are doing lessons on performance of vertical ventilation on residential ( or virtually any, but not all ) structures. The statement on the video was that the ventilation was still effective. What rubric is used to define its effectiveness? Is it false perception based on traditional tactics and a false belief in what is actually occurring or being seen? I ask these questions in earnest as someone who has spent 35 years in a very busy urban department and performed these same tactics with false beliefs until truly being a student of the job and learning the truth behind many of my beliefs. Stay safe brothers and sisters and keep learning.
@@JB91710 you contradict yourself. UL stops just short of saying don’t do it. All of the data they provide however does say don’t do it. One just needs to look very clearly at the data. I would say that is the most frustrating part of the UL information is that they provide a slouch of data that clearly identifies what actions should be or should not be taken, yet they don’t just directly spell it out. It leaves many to make the correlation that if they don’t say not to then it’s ok. As you stated in the beginning, for it to work in the incredibly rare scenario that it might, everything has to be worked out perfectly in timing. A timing sequence that is virtually impossible to replicate outside of a lab. The end result is that performing the vertical vent is overwhelmingly not a tactic that holds validity in the modern aggressive fire attack. In a residential structure, the main tactic should be aggressively applying water to the fire as quickly as possible. In the majority of residential structures that means through the nearest door or window to the fire utilizing the reach and disbursement of a high flow handline. This attack in most cases would accomplish fire control well before a crew could even begin ventilation. In the cases it’s not controlled that quickly, are the cases where the last thing you might want to consider is creating a highly efficient yet uncontrollable flow path.
Mask up before you enter the hazard zone. A simple look at the cancer facts surrounding this job should be all we need to discuss. That’s not to say the potentials of the windows or doors failing and reaching flashover while you are kneeling down instead of dumping water on the fire. I’ve spent 35 years stepping off the rig and walking past the guys who got there first, only to put water on fire before they were done screwing around. But if you prefer to mask up in the yard or at the door….. by all means, this old guy will keep stealing your fires long after you start the chemo 🥸
Great roof work as old school roof work goes. The big question is, what was accomplished? Did opening the roof assist in extinguishment of the fire? As you could see from the fire behavior , the fire moved from ventilation limited to a veritable blowtorch. The fire “self vented” creating a dramatically hotter and faster fire. The fire was extinguished by the brothers getting under the roof and placing water in the attic space on the fire itself. Modern fire science shows that while there can be some instances where roof ventilation can be advantageous, this wasn’t one of them. We have to learn what the science and building construction tells us and stop risking lives on residential roofs that will collapse with nearly no warning. Constantly sounding the roof is good in theory, but what we have learned about modern construction in lightweight frames is that the moment the roof or floor feels spongy is the moment it will collapse. Because we have all gotten away with these roof practices for so long ( myself included) we have normalized deviant behavior that has killed brothers and will continue to do so if we don’t learn.
@@dillydilly7722 your youth and inexperience show in your answer. Pay attention to the science. Find a NIST UL boot camp class and sign up. You will then hear directly from instructors from FDNY, Chicago, Boston, LA and many others. I have spent over three decades crawling hallways and popping roofs in some of the busiest stations on the east coast and have learned that in the end you can look back and see if you have repeated a years worth of knowledge for 30 or 40 years or you can learn something from trainings and classes your entire career and advance yourself and your professionalism. To look down your nose at training and classes shows you to be headed in the direction of the former. Don’t make that mistake.
@@dillydilly7722 That was unnecessary. He has a right to voice his opinion. He did not engage in attacking personalities but addressed issues seen in the video. It is called constructive criticism. He is also right.
@@dillydilly7722 If you don’t take classes you’ll be riding backwards on the truck you’re whole career 😂 Man only stated facts and you still got hurt. I’m a 19 y/o fire cadet who just graduated and I know that being quiet when someone knows more than you is what gets you respect in this service.
